WordPress website costs in Perth: what you really pay

WordPress is the most widely used website platform in the world, and for plenty of Perth small businesses it is a sensible choice. But the price of a WordPress website is rarely the number on the first quote. This guide sets out what you pay to build one, what you keep paying each year, and how to tell whether WordPress or a custom-coded site suits your business better.

WordPress.org and WordPress.com are different things

When people say "WordPress" they usually mean one of two things.

WordPress.org is the free, open-source software. You put it on a hosting account you pay for, then add a theme for the design and plugins for extra features. The software costs nothing. Everything around it does.

WordPress.com is a hosted service run by Automattic. You pay a plan fee and they look after the server. At the time of writing, its plans range from a free tier to about US$45 a month for the Commerce plan, billed yearly, and monthly billing costs more. It is simpler, but you work within what your plan allows.

Most small business sites built by a freelancer or agency are WordPress.org sites on separate hosting. The rest of this guide assumes that.

The upfront build

Quotes for a WordPress site vary more than almost anything else in this industry, because "a WordPress website" can mean very different jobs. At one end, a ready-made theme with your logo, photos and text dropped in. At the other, weeks of custom design and development that happens to use WordPress underneath.

Neither is wrong. They are different products, and the cheaper one often costs more later. When you compare quotes, ask each one:

• Is the design custom, or a theme with our content added?
• Which plugins will the site rely on, and do any need a paid licence?
• Who writes the page content, and is it planned around what people search for?
• Is hosting included, and for how long?
• What happens after launch: who updates the site, and at what cost?

A low quote that leaves these unanswered is not a low price. It is a price you have not seen yet.

The yearly running costs

This is where WordPress budgets go wrong. A typical small business WordPress site has four running costs.

Hosting. Shared hosting from an Australian provider usually costs somewhere between $10 and $30 a month once the introductory price ends. That last part matters: many hosts advertise a low first-term price that rises at renewal, so check the renewal rate before you sign. Managed WordPress hosting, where the host handles speed, backups and some security for you, costs more. Kinsta, a well-known managed host, starts at about US$30 a month billed yearly.

Premium plugins and themes. Many useful plugins are free, but the ones businesses lean on often have a paid version sold as a yearly licence. At the time of writing, Yoast SEO Premium is US$118.80 a year for one site, Gravity Forms starts at US$59 a year, and Elementor's page builder plans start at about US$60 a year. A site with three or four of these can carry a few hundred US dollars a year in licences, and the Australian dollar price moves with the exchange rate.

Your domain. A .com.au domain is a small yearly cost, but it should be registered in your business's name, not your developer's.

Maintenance. This is the big one, and it is paid in your time or someone else's.

Updates are the real cost of WordPress

A WordPress site is WordPress itself plus a theme plus every plugin, each written by a different team and each releasing its own updates. Those updates fix bugs and close security holes, so they need to be applied. Sometimes an update conflicts with another plugin or the theme, and something on the site stops working.

Most published WordPress security problems are found in plugins rather than in WordPress itself. The site that tends to get into trouble is the one built and then left alone for a couple of years: an old plugin, an abandoned theme, or a contact form that quietly stopped sending enquiries.

So someone has to keep it current. That can be you, if you are comfortable logging in each month, applying updates, checking the site still works and keeping backups. Or it can be a developer or agency, who will usually sell it as a monthly care or maintenance plan. If you are offered one, ask what it actually covers. Applying updates is not the same as testing the site afterwards, and neither is the same as fixing what breaks.

None of this is a reason to avoid WordPress. It is a running cost, and it belongs in the budget from day one.

When WordPress is the right choice

WordPress is often the better option when:

• You publish a lot. If you post articles, news or new products every week, the WordPress editor is mature and familiar to many people.
• Several people edit the site. User roles and editing tools are well developed.
• You want to be able to change developers easily. Thousands of people work with WordPress. If your developer disappears, someone else can pick it up.
• Your needs are standard and your budget is tight. A simple brochure site on a good theme, kept up to date, can serve a small business well for years.
• A well-supported plugin already does what you need. WooCommerce for a straightforward online shop is the obvious example.

When a custom-coded site makes more sense

A custom-coded site is built for your business, without a general-purpose platform underneath. It tends to be the better buy when:

• The site needs to do something specific. Bookings that follow your rules, quotes that use your pricing, enquiries that go straight into the system you already use. On WordPress these often mean stacking plugins and hoping they agree.
• You would rather not maintain plugins. There is no plugin layer to keep updated, which removes the most common source of WordPress breakages and security fixes.
• Speed and search foundations matter to you. A fast WordPress site is possible, but it takes care. A custom build can be fast and well structured for search from the start, rather than tuned afterwards.
• Your content changes occasionally, not daily. Most small business sites are updated a few times a year: new photos, a price change, a new service page.

The trade-offs are real too. Fewer developers can pick up a custom codebase than a WordPress site, so ownership matters more. Make sure you own the code, the domain and the hosting account, and that the code is handed over in a form another developer could work with. Bigger changes, such as a new feature or a new section, go through a developer rather than a plugin you install yourself.

Questions to ask before you sign either

Whichever way you go, get these answers in writing:

1. Who owns the domain, the hosting account and the website files?
2. What is the total yearly running cost, line by line?
3. Who keeps the site updated, and who pays when an update breaks something?
4. Which parts can I edit myself, and how?
5. If I want to leave, what do I get and how long does it take?

A good developer, WordPress or otherwise, will be glad you asked.

Where freethedesk fits

We build custom-coded websites for Perth businesses, at fixed prices published on the page: a 6-page website for $3,000 and a 10-page website for $6,000, half when you buy and the rest before launch. Running costs charged by other providers, such as hosting and your domain, are set out before you commit. If WordPress suits you better, we will say so, and our SEO audits work on WordPress sites as well as ours. You can see what a custom build includes on our website development page.